In the past, rockets in general have been symmetric and produced thrust that acted through the center of gravity (cg) of the rocket. There are other missile arrangments where a plurality of rockets are clustered around a center body payload. In such a clustered configuration, the resultant thrust of the cluster goes through the center of gravity of the system only if the geometry of the cluster is symmetric, the thrust from each population unit is identical, or the cluster has some unusual combination of geometric assymmetry and individual thrust variations results in a net thrust misalignment of zero. If traditional symmetric propulsion units are used in this clustered arrangement, then inherent variations, both geometric and individual unit thrust, will cause a moment to be induced into the missile. These moments can quickly cause system performance degradation. There are a number of approaches to reducing these moments and most rely on directing the axial motor thrust, of the individual propulsion unit through the center of gravity of the system. These approaches reaim the motor axial thrust so that it passes through the system center of gravity either by canting the entire motor or by canting only the rocket motor nozzle. The down side of this reaiming is a reduction of the propulsion unit thrust along the missile system center line and a resulting overall performance loss that is directly proportional to the cosine of the cant angle. Therefore, there is a need to overcome some of the faults of the prior arrangments.
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide a missile arrangement that has a center body payload with a plurality of rockets secured around the payload and having means for causing the thrust of the rocket to go through the center of gravity of the missile system without degradation of the motor axial thrust.
Another object of this invention is to provide a center body payload with a plurality of rockets symmetrically arranged around the payload with the axis of each of the rockets being parallel to the axis of the center body payload and with the thrust from each rocket being directed through the center of gravity of the missile system.
Other objects and advantages of this invention will be obvious to those skilled in this art.